The Michelin Guide will soon start judging the world’s hotels as well as its restaurants. But what will the guide’s shadowy inspectors be looking for?

By Adam Hay-Nicholls

The sight of Gwendal Poullennec is liable to send restaurant kitchens into a fluster. Tall, neatly bearded, and wearing a slim-fit suit and tie, he is, at the age of 44, the international director of the Michelin Guide. I met him at Les Bains, a former nightclub recently turned into a boutique hotel in Paris’s Marais district.

To give some idea of Poullennec’s power, it helps to know about a phone call that happened in March of this year between him and Guy Savoy, a chef long lauded as the world’s best.

Savoy’s Monnaie de Paris restaurant had READ ON

At just 29 years old, the Per Se alum is the head chef at Manhattan’s splashiest new fine-dining restaurant

By Jeanne Malle

“My passion is not cooking,” says Dae Kim. Every night, Kim returns home from preparing 12-course tasting menus at Nōksu, in Manhattan, to an apartment with no stovetop, no pots, and no silverware. “I hate cooking at home.” And yet, at 29 years old, he is an alum of Thomas Keller’s three-Michelin-starred Per Se. Since Nōksu opened, in October, he’s been the head chef of the Korean-inspired fine-dining restaurant, which is located in the 34th Street–Herald Square subway station.

When Kim moved from Seoul to Chicago at the age of 14, he dreamed of becoming a motorcyclist. He READ ON

For decades, Charles Masson presided over La Grenouille, hosting everyone from Edward R. Murrow to David Rockefeller—not to mention a tricky Truman Capote

By Charles Masson

On La Grenouille’s 45th-anniversary celebration, in 2007, the late Doug McGrath, a very dear friend and talented author, asked my mother: “Madame Masson, why did you open in late December while everyone’s away? Why?” My mother laughed: “I don’t know. It was stupid.”

On December 19, 1962, Charles and Gisèle Masson opened a French restaurant with an unpronounceable name, on a snowy night, amid the longest newspaper strike ever to hit New York. There were no backers, no partners, no real money. It was fueled only by elbow grease and purveyors’ credit.

In its tadpole stage the restaurant’s linoleum floor, red vinyl settees, Sheetrock walls, and acoustic-tile ceilings didn’t seem to matter. In time, La Grenouille grew with love and flowers. READ ON

Maxim’s, in Paris, has never been known for its food. But now, under new ownership, it just may manage to re-create its sexy scene

By Alexander Lobrano

Jean Cocteau once remarked, “Paris will be foutu the day that Maxim’s disappears.” But somehow, everyone survived the Rue Royale stalwart’s recent years-long shutdown.

Maxim’s returned just in time to celebrate its 130th birthday, and there are more eyes on its alarmingly opulent Art Nouveau décor—a listed French historical monument—than ever.

It had been a long time since anyone came to Maxim’s expecting an exalted culinary experience. Its most notorious regulars—Edward VII and Alphonso XIII, Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor and husbands—have been dead for decades.

Now this grande dame has READ ON

With $300,000 salaries, first-class travel, and endless opportunities to work with caviar, it’s boom times for private chefs

By Alexandra Wolfe

On a recent evening in Palm Beach Gardens, chef Luis Polanco had just finished preparing the frisée with lardons, grilled beef, and truffle-whipped potatoes, set aside the crème caramel, and carried his four-foot charcuterie board into the living room, when the frantic hostess made one more request.

As she whirled around the living room, counting cocktail glasses and poking at flower arrangements, she asked Polanco about the other beef dish—the one with rice, broth, and simmered vegetables. It was for her 120-pound dog, a mastiff who ate just as heartily as the guests, albeit without the truffles.

Polanco got this job through Executive Chefs at Home, a private-chef “matchmaking” READ ON

From fine dining to sweets shops, there’s never been a better time to eat your way through Mumbai. Our peripatetic omnivore relishes every bite

By Christine Muhlke

A well-traveled friend recently asked me if he should spend a week eating in Mumbai on his way back from Bali. “Are there enough good restaurants to keep me busy?” he wondered. “I very much want to try Masque.” Enough? You could spend a month in Mumbai just getting a handle on the bread. That said, a New Yorker spoiled for newness, excellence, and variety would most likely run out of high-end—or simply buzzy—Indian spots by the end of a week. That’s because most locals who can afford to go to good restaurants have a cook, and when they go out, they don’t want more Indian food. READ ON

Ignacio Mattos has silently ruled over the city’s dining scene for a decade. Now the chef is opening up about his upbringing, his love life, and his burning passion for good food

By Michael Hainey

Ignacio Mattos is the Invisible Chef. By most measures, his restaurants have become some of the most influential and acclaimed in New York City. Yet unlike so many chefs who crave recognition, the Uruguayan native seems to go out of his way to keep a low profile. So low that he does not appear on Wikipedia’s list of famous Uruguayans. (But maybe that’s a good thing?)

Mattos, 44, burst onto the scene in 2013 when he opened Estela in a cramped, second-floor space on Houston Street (so cramped that coat check was—and continues to be—a clothing rack READ ON

The latest cookbook by Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert promises to make cooking seafood easy. To test it, a writer gave it to her teenage son

By Melanie Rehak

“I need pictures.” So said my 17-year-old son as he prepared to steam sea bass on a recent Saturday night. Like most teenage boys, he was extremely hungry and wanting to get on with it. Steamed fish was a stretch far beyond his usual—eggs, ramen, and the occasional grilled steak. I could see him itching to consult Google Images, but this was a strictly analog situation; mothers can be cruel that way. Our only search engine was a copy of Eric Ripert’s new cookbook, Seafood Simple.

My plan was to determine if the author’s seventh cookbook, a “companion” to his previous one, READ ON

Founded by an American transplant in Rome and his Italian wife, Homebaked Grandma’s Kitchen serves bacon-and-egg breakfasts to hungry tourists, hungover students, and begrudging locals

By Bill Tonelli

The Italians have a reputation, mostly deserved, for eating not just well but wisely. We’ve heard it all before: Mediterranean diet, fruit and vegetables when in season, no G.M.O.’s, everything as local as possible (even McDonald’s advertises its use of domestic beef only), plus recent proposed bans on infamies such as lab-produced meat and flour made from insects.

This could be why Italians enjoy greater life expectancy than we Americans do, No. 8 on the U.N.’s list—84.20 years—compared to our miserable No. 40 (79.74 years). They obsess over the most arcane aspects of the things they eat, and strive READ ON

London’s East End has gone from “proper old boozers” to natural-wine hubs

By Spike Carter

Take a stroll through some of the hipper parts of East London and it appears as though every shop has a sideline selling natural wine. Whether it’s a café, record store, or even a clothing boutique, bottles of Chin Chin Vinho Verde or Gran Cerdo Tinto are stacked up alongside the single-origin coffees, rare-groove vinyl, and $300 sweaters.

Though “natural wine” might sound like a new trend, it simply denotes an embrace of the traditional, artisanal manner in which wine was always made before supermarkets homogenized the business.

“Natural wine is made with minimal intervention, where the wine-maker lets READ ON

Started as a lunch canteen for the architects upstairs, Ruthie Rogers’s River Cafe has shaped The Way We Eat Now—and launched the careers of countless chefs

By Mark Rozzo

The satirist Craig Brown once said that before Sir Terence Conran’s Habitat shops transformed the way England decorated in the 1960s, “there were no chairs and no France.” Along similar lines, you might say that before Ruthie Rogers and Rose Gray opened London’s River Cafe, on September 10, 1987, there was no extra-virgin olive oil and hardly any Italy.

Rogers, an American expat from Woodstock, New York, was an exuberant home chef, married to Richard Rogers, the British-Italian architect; she had absorbed Tuscan cooking through her mother-in-law, Dada Rogers. Gray, raised in Scotland and Surrey, had lived in Lucca with her family and had cooked in Manhattan, at Nell’s, the starry Keith McNally and Lynn Wagenknecht–owned nightclub on 14th Street. READ ON

There’s a new Richard Caring restaurant in town. But the gods are not smiling down on Bacchanalia

By Hilary Rose

On a recent night in London, Berkeley Square was buzzing. In one corner, customers for the restaurant Sexy Fish were navigating a gold velvet rope, eager to pay $8 for miso soup and $145 for Wagyu beef.

On the other side of the square, a replica rainforest climbed the Georgian façade of Annabel’s, the nightclub where Prince Andrew once held his stag night. Instead of royalty, a large stuffed parrot was clinging to a 30-foot-high tree, and a leopard peered out through the undergrowth.

Further up the square, sprawling across a corner where a vast Porsche showroom used to be, is a restaurant called Bacchanalia. All three establishments are owned by one man, Richard Caring, and all three are completely bonkers. READ ON

At Maison François, everything—from the cork-lined ceiling to the french fries—is worth talking about

By Ashley Baker

It’s the omelet. It’s simply too good-looking. We’re only talking about fluffed, folded-over eggs saturated with color and filled with delicately sautéed spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms, but in the world of eggs, this is a Fabergé.

And it’s only one of the reasons why Maison François is now the most reliable restaurant in central London. Its thirtysomething chef and proprietor, François O’Neill, composes his restaurant as one would assemble a dish at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Start with a crowd-pleasing, French-leaning menu. Layer in handsome interiors, rooted in midcentury-modern design. Finish with a welcoming, highly competent staff, stylishly dressed in dark denim jeans, crisp, white button-ups, and starched aprons. READ ON

As the fall grape harvest begins, the youngest head wine-maker in England discusses the U.K.’s burgeoning wine industry

By Elena Clavarino

Vineyards bring to mind temperate landscapes in Southern Europe, Northern California, and northern Argentina. The damp pastures of England are probably the last places you’d think of when discussing fine wine. But with climate change and rising temperatures in the U.K., England’s wine industry is rapidly expanding. Expert wine-makers from around the world are moving to Southern England to produce Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Tommy Grimshaw, 27, is at the forefront of this new wave. Since 2020, he’s been the head wine-maker of Langham Wine Estate, in Dorchester, which produces England’s most prestigious sparkling white wine. While Veuve Clicquot READ ON

The Manhattan opening of Roscioli, a revered fourth-generation Roman bakery and salumeria, asks: Can an iconic Italian restaurant ever really be replicated in the U.S.?

By Nina Friend

On a recent Tuesday night in New York, a crowd was forming on the corner of King and MacDougal Streets, just below Houston. The restaurant Roscioli, which had been under construction for the past year, was finally taking reservations.

Thick brown paper no longer covered the windows, and just like at the original Roscioli, off Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori square, the walls at Roscioli New York were lined with jars, tins, boxes, and bottles filled with everything from dried pasta to preserved artichokes. Unlike in Rome, this Roscioli doesn’t have separate spaces for a salumeria, bakery, and wine bar. Instead, all three concepts are rolled into one building. READ ON

Copenhagen has long been an epicenter of fine dining. But these exciting wine bars make the case for a less fussy experience

By Kyle Beechey

Denmark is not France or Italy, or even Spain. But it’s still an excellent, if under-the-radar, travel destination for oenophiles.

Today, aficionados around the world are debating the merits of so-called natural wine (a term with no official designation or commonly agreed-upon meaning), but the conversation began in 2003 with the opening of Noma. For its chef, René Redzepi, an ingredient’s origins and cultivation methods mattered, and the same went for wine. Many of Redzepi’s disciples have hung out their own shingles, opening wine-centric restaurants and bars throughout Copenhagen, which makes this an especially ripe time to visit.

Start by the canal in the central historic district of Indre READ ON

At the Rochambeau Club, it’s always five o’clock, and Labor Day has been postponed indefinitely

By George Pendle

As summer turns into fall, one place remains evergreen. At the Rochambeau Club, members wear white throughout the seasons as they make their way from the majestic neoclassical clubhouse to the manicured courts, where the pock-pock of tennis balls sounds year-round, and the smell of cut grass is always in the air. The Panoramic Sorbet Lounge is perpetually busy, the Snorkelling Jetty never closes, and the Orangery remains the perfect place to while away an hour with a glass of the house rosé.

The Rochambeau is a storied institution, which brags of having sent three ball boys to Roland-Garros. READ ON

After nearly 25 years in Williamsburg, Andrew Tarlow’s Diner is more than a restaurant—it’s a happening

By Christine Muhlke

On New Year’s Eve, 1998, Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth opened Diner on a desolate corner in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The dilapidated diner that the roommates, who’d met while working at the Odeon, had rebuilt with friends didn’t have gas. So chef Caroline Fidanza, whom they had recently hired, carried cassoulet over from their unregulated loft. The rest was Brooklyn history.

Diner became the first subway-tiled clubhouse for the neighborhood’s early adopters. It also drew adventurous eaters across the bridge, who were delighted when the server began writing out the day’s simple, seasonal dishes on READ ON

Espadon, at the Hôtel Ritz, used to be one of the most exciting restaurants in France. Will the talented young chef Eugénie Béziat recapture the magic?

By Alexander Lobrano

Will Eugénie Béziat become the Coco Chanel of French gastronomy? The young French chef has taken over Espadon, the haute cuisine restaurant of the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, and even though it’s not opening until September 26, it’s all that anyone is talking about.

The kitchens of the Ritz have been an epicenter of gastronomy ever since hotelier César Ritz and chef Auguste Escoffier opened the property, in 1898. But L’Espadon, as the restaurant was then called, closed on March 14, 2020. When, in 2022, the hotel announced that the little-known Béziat had replaced outgoing chef Nicolas Sale, it was front-page news. (Well, at least in France.) READ ON

After opening a shop in the East Village, fashion’s favorite juice purveyor is taking his ginger-lime shots to delis and grocery stores around Manhattan

By Elena Clavarino

The fashion set often goes for juice over food. Their current favorite: Toms Juice, which is packaged in elegant, perfectly sized glasses that are adorned with a comic-book-style logo. They’re single-flavored, organic, and best served ice-cold.

Tom Wright, the 33-year-old, New Zealand–born entrepreneur behind the company, started the business in 2019 while working as a waiter. Since then, he’s landed it in every trendy fridge in Lower Manhattan. Two years ago, he opened his first storefront, in the East Village. Creative directors and stylists flock to the small store for photos to put on Instagram stories. Early next month, his ginger-lime shots will start lining the shelves of 500 delis, supermarkets, and stores across New York City. READ ON

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube stars whose recipes have been viewed billions of times online are translating followings into real-life storefronts. But is the food any good?

By Lynn Q. Yu

T

he Turkish restaurateur Nusret Gökçe was relatively unknown when a 2017 video captured him cocking his hand back and sprinkling salt on a piece of meat with flamboyant, flamenco flair. Since then, “Salt Bae,” as he’s known, has used his viral popularity to open 30 restaurants around the world, some of which feature his slightly ludicrous “Golden Tomahawk,” a $1,000 steak encrusted in 24-karat gold.

Salt Bae’s success, a result of using Internet fame to launch brick-and-mortar restaurants, is now being replicated by a growing class of food-based content creators. Increasingly, “chefluencers”—TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram stars whose recipes have been viewed billions of times online—are finding opportunities to translate social-media clout into real-life storefronts. READ ON

It’s the best of times and the worst of times for the quintessential summer drink. Hotter temperatures have boosted the wine’s popularity, but they’re also threatening its vineyards

By Cole Stangler

Just a few days into this year’s harvest at the Château de Saint-Martin, a vineyard tucked into a valley in inland Provence owned by the same family since 1740, estate owner Adeline de Barry spotted one of her worst fears playing out on the vines: leaves browned at the edges surrounded by bunches of dried-out grapes, some of them irrevocably spoiled.

Putting a quick tour of the property on hold, she crouched down under the sweltering sun and ran her hands through the damaged vines. “They’re suffering,” she told me with a sigh. “This is exactly the concern.”

Vines in this condition do not make for good rosé, which READ ON

The new Peninsula Istanbul hotel is among the most exciting openings in Europe this year—but not because of the guest rooms

By Alexander Lobrano

Even those who never leave the premises of the new Peninsula Istanbul hotel will still have an intimate experience with Turkey’s largest city, an ancient metropolis of nearly 16 million that straddles the Bosphorus.

Under different circumstances, it takes decades to create a truly great urban hotel, such as the Ritz in Paris, Claridge’s in London, or the Carlyle in New York. Acquiring some patina is part of it, but the best big-city hotels are also local favorites, which is what gives them their style and energy.

Following a soft opening in February, it’s taken only seven months for this 138-room, 39-suite beauty to become the most stylish address in Istanbul. Why? READ ON

Following his exile from the beloved Wolseley, one of London’s top restaurateurs is coming back with three new projects

By Ed Cumming

The kitchen staff at The Wolseley thought it was an April Fool.

In the early hours of the morning on 1 April last year, Jeremy King, the boss of the acclaimed restaurant group Corbin & King, wrote to staff and customers to say that, after an increasingly fraught auction, he and his longtime business partner, Chris Corbin, had been outbid by Minor International, their Thai-based majority shareholder.

‘We took part in the auction to try and buy the business and assets of Corbin & King that we didn’t already own, including of course all the restaurants,’ King wrote. ‘Regrettably, that attempt failed and Minor Hotel Group was the successful bidder, buying the entire business.’ READ ON